Hacked home PCs...

…are the explanation for a surge in online criminal activity of "almost every variety" in the first half of 2005, the Washington Post reports. The article's reporting on a study by Symantec showing that home PCs are being "hacked into" via vulnerabilities in Web browsers, including Mozilla Firefox. "Security researchers uncovered 25 security holes in Firefox during the first half of 2005, nearly twice the number found in IE [Internet Explorer]," though Mozilla "tends to issue security patches to mend problems much sooner than Microsoft does for IE," and "hackers are still focusing their efforts on IE," ZDNET cites the study as saying. [Firefox users need to check Mozilla.org often for updates.] What hackers do through those browser vulnerabilities is take control of home computers and - without their owners knowing - turning them into zombies or "bots" to create "botnets," which account for "a massive increase in the number of 'denial of service' attacks" against Web sites (from an average of 119 a day to 927 a day in the first half of this year, Symantec found) - often for purposes of extortion (hackers are now in it for the money, not just for "glory"). As for the number of active bot computers used daily, the number went from 4,348 to 10,352 in that six-month period. Here's The Register on the Symantec report. Meanwhile, keep those PCs patched and firewalls running (see ZDNET on ZoneAlarm)! See also "What if our PC's a zombie?!"